Poisoned Kisses (18 page)

Marco’s voice was flat. Steady. “I was digging a hole.”

Kyra hissed like a cat suddenly startled. She knew, though he had not said it, that he was digging a
grave.
She tried to roll away from him but he caught her by the shoulders and made her look at him. “At sunrise, you have to bury me, Kyra.”

So she’d been right when she saw him splashing into the water and seen only Odysseus leaving Calypso for the sea. He’d been planning to leave her all along. But he wasn’t leaving her for another woman; he was leaving her for the underworld.

“I can’t do it,” Kyra said fiercely.

“You have to. Even if we escape Ogun, he’s not the only war god who will want to use my blood. Until I die, I’m a one-man weapon of mass destruction. You know it.”

It was true. It’s why she’d tried to kill him in the first place. But that was before she’d fallen so helplessly in love. And now, the thought was too much to bear. Kyra’s throat tightened. She shook her head violently. “No.”

“You have to do it. Who else will guide my shade after death? You’re the only angel I’d ever call for.”

“There’s another way,” Kyra whispered. “Let me stare into your eyes and scourge your wounds with my torchlight. I could try…”

He cupped her chin. “I’d rather be dead than live as a madman, Kyra.”

She had no doubt of that. And maybe she’d rather see him dead than ranting and raving as her mother had, locked in his own personal hell. She could kill him if she failed, but would she? “Maybe you wouldn’t go mad. Maybe it’d be like…”

“Like what?”

She didn’t want to tell him, but he had a right to know. “If I put you to the torch, it would lay you open to me. I’d see everything. Every memory, every pain, every sin you’ve ever committed and every secret you hold dear. All your weaknesses and fears…”

She swallowed, remembering how
violated
her mother had felt. How her living mother had never been able to distinguish between Kyra and raping, warmongering Ares ever again. She knew before he said it that a man like Marco wouldn’t—couldn’t—allow her to violate him in this way. Especially since it might not work. He’d hold tight to his mortal dignity even in death.

He had the haunting look of a man who had already made the decision to die. He traced her lower lip where his twilight kisses had burned and asked, “You’re a nymph of the underworld. You’ll still be able to see my shade when I’m dead, won’t you?”

Kyra choked back a sob. “But it won’t be like this. I’ll be able to see you, but not touch you. It can’t ever be like this again.”

“Then let’s not waste the time we have left,” he said, pulling her across him and kissing her with a desperation that cut through her tears.

A
low chug-chug of an aircraft broke through the silent and starry night. “What is that?” Kyra asked.

Marco was on his feet in an instant, grabbing Kyra’s hand and yanking her up from the ground. “It’s a helicopter. Get dressed. We’re going to have to run.”

“But it could be friendly—it could be a UN helicopter!”

“It’s not,” Marco said with the complete surety of an arms dealer who knew every make and model of killing machine on the planet. “It’s Russian. Get dressed.”

She’d just finished throwing her damp clothes on when the dark sky was broken apart by an intense beam. The chopper’s bright lights methodically crisscrossed the field. It was hard to know which way to run. The plane was their only real avenue of escape, but it had no fuel. “Is it Ogun?” Marco asked. “Can you see who it is?”

Kyra looked up, opened her eyes wide and let her torchlight illuminate the sky. She could see right through the chopper.
She could see into the cockpit, and what she saw made her gasp. “It’s Daddy!”

It was too late to run. Marco knew it, too. He was pressing something into her hand, and she looked down to see it was the handle of her knife. Even so, Kyra searched frantically for an avenue of escape. The grasses were tall. If they kept low, perhaps Ares wouldn’t see them. But his vulture would sniff them out. Maybe the water—if they went under the water…but the lights were already on them, blinding and nightmarish, as the chopper buffeted them with bursts of air.

Marco’s eyes locked on hers. “Aim right for the heart.”

The chopper blades spun closer and closer. Kyra’s hair whipped at her face and her hand tightened on the knife. She knew what was at stake. She knew that Marco was willing to sacrifice his life. He was a hydra; until he was dead, his body would be a constant source of the deadliest poison. He was counting on her to be strong. But she wasn’t a hardened, tireless immortal anymore. “I can’t,” she shouted over the noise of the chopper, shuddering with revulsion. “I can’t!”

Marco’s eyes softened as he put his hand over hers, their fingers wrapping around the handle. “It’s all right. I’ll do it.”

To kill oneself with a knife was harder than most people realized. He was a man trying to cross over the threshold of death and it shamed her that he should have to do it by himself. And yet, Kyra couldn’t let go of the knife. The chopper landed and Ares leaped out. He was as tall and terrifying as Kyra remembered him. It didn’t matter if he wore the crested helmet and red cape of Spartan warriors or modern combat camouflage, the terror of seeing Ares was always the same.

The Greek god of war came striding toward them as soon as his boots hit the ground, and his vulture chased after him. There was no more time. “Kyra, give me the knife!” Marco shouted, wrestling with her for it. They grappled for the blade,
just as they had the first night they met. Her muscles were tight and sore. But not even Marco’s arms, those beautiful arms, were as strong as her love for him. It was selfish, it was wrong, but she couldn’t let him die.

“No!” Kyra shouted, wrenching the knife from his grip and flinging it away. Time seemed to stand still as she and Marco watched the knife hurtle through the night air, and splash into the dark water. It was over. All for naught. Ares and his sharp-faced minion were upon them and Marco’s look of devastation broke her heart.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Kyra mouthed.

She expected Marco to rail at her, to rage at her for what she’d done. But instead, he pulled her into his arms.

If Ares hadn’t been so furious, he wouldn’t have been able to bear looking at his daughter. It was bad enough to see a mortal man’s hands on Kyra. Nearly intolerable to see how the hydra shielded her with his own body—as if Kyra needed his feeble mortal protection. But worst of all was watching his progeny cast away a perfectly good weapon! Where was Kyra’s fierceness now? Where was her once-reliable bloodlust? All subsumed in her tearstained nymph’s passion. The time had clearly come for an intervention.

Ares swung his club into the back of the hydra’s knees and swept him off his feet. He could have killed him in that moment, cracked his skull open in a fit of unrestrained rage. But the war god knew the prize he’d captured was too valuable for that. Instead, he brought his boot down on Marco’s throat.

“Inject him,” Ares said to the vulture.

“Leave him alone!” Kyra shrieked, lunging for the vulture.

But for once, his minion was faster than the nymph. She stabbed the needle into the hydra’s arm and pumped the ambrosia into his bloodstream while he struggled. Then Ares
brought down his weight on Marco, choking him, cutting off his air, crushing his windpipe. It wouldn’t kill him, not with the ambrosia in his system. But it would hurt, and Ares
wanted
him to suffer. He
should
suffer for having made Ares chase him down. He
should
suffer for daring to stand against an Olympian, certainly. But mostly, he should suffer for having made Kyra love him.

If this pathetic mortal died, what would Kyra turn into? Some weeping rock outcropping? Some sad, cooing dove? Ares shuddered to think. Why, was she already changing. Did Ares spy an actual scab on Kyra’s arm—a wound that hadn’t yet healed?

“Let the vulture give you ambrosia,” Ares commanded his daughter.

“I don’t want it,” Kyra cried. “I’d rather live and die with Marco.”

“But your hydra will never die now, Kyra,” Ares said as Marco clawed at his leg, struggling for the air that wouldn’t come. “He’s just going to
suffer.
Do you know how much pain he’s in? The way his lungs burn without air?”

“Stop it,” Kyra pleaded.

“I’ll let him breathe again when you take the ambrosia,” Ares said, watching the struggle in his daughter’s eyes die away. It confirmed all the worst things Ares suspected about love. He’d told Aphrodite many times that love was a weakness—a chink in the finest, most advanced armor. Now Kyra bore that out. She held out her arm for the injection, wincing as the needle pierced her flesh. All the while, her eyes were on her lover, her mouth open as if she would breathe for him if she could. And then it was done.

“You should be thanking me,” Ares said, lifting his foot off the throat of the man who lay choking and gasping at his feet. “I’ve given your lover an eternity. You’ll never have to grieve for him, and chained as my minion, he’ll never leave
you. You can join with me, too, ride in the tank beside me. The family that fights together…”

Kyra shook her head in denial like a recalcitrant child. Why were his progeny so unreasonable?

“In the meantime,” Ares said, taking a gun from his hip, “It’s time to gather a little bit of hydra blood.” Ares aimed for Marco’s leg, at the main vessel—the one that would bleed the most—and fired.

The ambrosia coursing through Marco’s veins was like a red-hot burst of adrenaline straight to the brain, but it didn’t numb the shattering pain of the bullet as it tore into his leg and passed through the other side. A shout tore itself from his raw throat as the blood bubbled up from his wound, spattering the ground and hissing where it fell. There was blood everywhere and Marco writhed in agony. He’d seen enough combat to know that the bullet had severed his artery. But while the ambrosia did nothing to stop the suffering, it did give Marco a remarkable clarity of mind. As he lay there in the dirt, jamming his fist into the wound in a helpless battle to stop the toxic bleeding, he realized that this was how it was going to be. Ares was going to keep him alive so that he could bleed him like the African Maasai bleed their cows.

And with his ambrosia-colored eyes, Marco saw Kyra clearly for the first time, too. She was the most tenacious woman he’d ever met, and she’d never stop fighting for him. Even now, she was grappling with Ares for the gun, lionhearted as ever, but the war god flicked her away into the mud like she was nothing but a flyspeck of a girl.

Blood pooled under Marco, burning his clothes, burning the grass and poisoning the earth. He’d never been a coward. He’d never been afraid to fight for what he believed in. He hadn’t even been afraid to die for what he believed in. But he had feared madness all his life, and now it was his only possible escape.

Kyra had to put him to the torch. “Kyra! Look at me.”

Her eyes glittered with confusion. Her lower lip trembled. “No,
look at me,
” Marco said, teeth gnashing. “I love you. I trust you. Do it.”

She hesitated, her long eyelashes fluttering as she realized what he meant for her to do. Then her stare went impossibly wide. They turned to liquid light. She burned brighter than any star; he felt the heat of her fiery gaze on his skin and it scorched everything it touched. It was agony. He heard himself howl, clawing at his own eyes, but there was no way to stop it now. The crackling roar of fire drowned out all else.

Kyra was inside him. He could smell and taste her, but there was no pleasure in this. He felt her probing for scars the same way she’d searched out the ones on his body, the unbearable light of her torch exposing every wound. It didn’t matter that he loved her. He still felt ripped open, exposed, violated in every way. And it didn’t matter that she loved him, either, for Kyra was now a warrior wielding her knife and torch to vanquish a foe.

Like the African women whose deadened eyes told the story of brutal rape, he no longer felt his own flesh. He no longer had a sense of himself in the world. He thought he heard Kyra say his name as she cut him, as she sliced him open, shoving her burning torch into his mind like a hot iron. Then his world went white.

The serpentine, chthonic beast lurked in the darkest part of Marco’s mind. Kyra’s torchlight gave it nowhere to hide, and it screeched as if her light were burning it alive. Foaming at the mouth, the monster came for her, fangs bared, trying to lure Kyra into the darkness. But Kyra leaped fearlessly into the breach, shearing off the heads and searing closed each wound. The noise—the shrieking—was unbearable. She imagined the hydra poison on her skin, burning her alive, but she pushed
through until she saw the bullet fragment in Marco’s shoulder. It lurked like an iron serpent, cold and deadly. She used her powers to burn it, the stink of hatred and Marco’s internal rage filling her nostrils but she didn’t dare stop. There was no glory in it. She was hurting him and it was grim work—grimmer than any labor of Hercules, for he had not loved the hydra he killed.

She worked as swiftly as she could, but she felt Marco’s mind slipping away from her. His blood was bubbling, the poison boiling away. If he couldn’t separate his mind from the monster within, she would destroy him, too.

“Marco!” she called as the brightness burned through his eyes, burned through his mind and soul. But where was he? She couldn’t see him. She was a
lampade.
She was supposed to guide him back over the threshold of madness. She’d vanquished the monster, but where was the man?

In desperation, Kyra snapped her eyes closed, the sudden darkness enveloping her like a burial shroud. And she wasn’t inside Marco’s mind anymore, but in the grass.

“You foolish nymph!” Ares roared. “What have you done?”

Kyra was afraid of what she’d see when she opened her eyes again. It was Marco’s screaming that finally made her look. She found herself kneeling beside Marco’s body, though she couldn’t remember having gone to his side. The bullet fragment in his shoulder had pushed through his skin, tearing through the scar, and emerging through his bloody flesh like the malevolent presence that it was. Marco’s more recent gunshot wound was healing—the ambrosia doing its work—but he was writhing, his strong face contorted, his lips forming choked words and phrases that she could make no sense of.

It was happening again. Marco was like her mother—lost somewhere within his own depths, somewhere she couldn’t
reach. And thanks to the ambrosia, he might well be trapped in this madness forever.

“What have you done?” Ares again demanded to know.

Gods above and below,
what
had
she done? She tried to rouse Marco—tried to shake him. But he looked through her as if he didn’t know her. She called his name and he didn’t answer. He was gone. Once again, because of her father, she’d destroyed someone she loved. Turning on the war god in fury, Kyra grated, “What have I done? I’ve fulfilled my destiny.”

“Your destiny is to serve me,” Ares said. “To fight beside me.”

Kyra laughed, the sound on the edge of hysteria.

“You were born to it,” the war god insisted. “You weren’t bred for love. You were bred for destruction. Just look around you at everything you’ve touched.”

Kyra looked down at the man she loved, who lay in broken anguish. Even the soil they’d made love upon was now stained with blood. All those dreams she’d allowed herself to reach for in the beauty of an African night were all in shattered pieces. How could she deny the truth of her father’s words? But then Ares came up behind her, his golden hand coming to rest on her shoulder, a hollow comfort, insubstantial and unreal. She’d been touched by a man who loved her, and it’d made all the difference.

“Do you know what I was born to?” Kyra raged, her hand still gripping Marco’s. “I was born a nymph, and nymphs
change.
Like Echo changed into a voice on the wind. Like Clytie changed into heliotrope. Like Daphne changed into a tree—”

“That’s enough, Kyra,” Ares warned.

But he would never frighten her again. Never again. “I’m a nymph and I can
change,
and not you or all the ambrosia left in the world can stop me. So leave us alone or I swear on the River Styx that the next time you see me I’ll be nothing you recognize. Nothing you know.”

Ares snatched his hand away. “You don’t mean that.”

But she’d sworn upon the River Styx, and they both knew it was the most serious oath she could make. “Do you want to test me? Go away. Just go away!”

“As you wish,” Ares growled, stepping over the hollow form of Marco. “He isn’t a hydra anymore and his blood is now harmless. He’s useless to me.”